People want to live a comfortable life and they'll give up with natural meat if they'll be given good artifical alternative (especially, with genetically identical alternative). Green energy, effective water recycling, disposable packing materials and automatic sorting and processing of garbage are the things that, given the adequate technology, can make the sustainable life style smooth and easy. We don't need to change ourselves and consume less - we need to be innovative enough, so that our consumer life style will not harm the nature.
The effort to make existing life sustainable could be spent making life more comfortable, slapping an excuse for caring the environment on the way. Meat can be improved by giving them more land and organic food sources, car transportation can be improved by a better designed electric cars, and that's what we are getting, instead of research into artificial meats(which do exist in an inferior state) or improvements to public transportation (public transport in many cities is neglected).
One could always go back to a life of eating meat once a week, riding bicycle to and from work, living in a developing country with broadband internet, electricity and clean water and thereby remove almost completely their carbon footprint, but who is in the mood for that, let's make life more innovative and even more comfortable than before, while telling ourselves these innovations are for the environment also! We eat organic and drive electric and pay $1000 a month for health insurance! Go us!
